


Playing Our Song

by Cygna_hime



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 05:56:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cygna_hime/pseuds/Cygna_hime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they first said, "Listen, it's our song!" they had no idea how much could change and that still be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Our Song

It is a song they sing but seldom.

Long ago, in the twilight, they sang it often, and laughed to hear it on another’s lips. They laid claim to it with the casual egotism of youth; every time they heard it together it was a confirmation; every time apart, it was a laughing reminder, a wink of the world’s eye.

Maedhros thought it burned away, lines of music withering in the ship-flame into a ring of ash that sank beneath the waves. Fingon thought it frozen, an instrument made brittle on the ice and then at the least touch shattered into powder. There was no heart for song in the midnight; only Maglor could find anything to say in the strings of a harp, and he invented by starlight threnodies that were to be his theme for ever after.

At the dawn, Fingon mourned its loss; but at the dawn, Maedhros was glad, for what he had lost already could not be taken from him. He thought it lost, still, thought all music that was sweet and not made by the echo of laughter and pain lost to him. At that time, Fingon rediscovered song, as he rediscovered laughter and rest and warmth. But that song, no one sang; long memories let it fade from the lips of the living, out of respect for grief and wrath at betrayal. In joy they had made it their own, and now that they were no longer, it was still their own, broken past repair even as they were.

Yet they repaired it. Alone on the mountain, Fingon found the words rising bittersweet to his lips, the notes flowing melancholy from his fingers. Alone on the mountain, Maedhros heard and his wandering mind was called back from the bone-bleached desert, and he who thought he had forgotten everything remembered the song.

It is too heavy now to sing as they once sang it, as greeting and parting and conversation between. A weight of tears lies heavy on what was once so light, and though it is no less beloved it is no longer a jest.

They sing it never now before others, and alone only with greatest care, for with every line they awaken the memory of times that were before. Like a river-canyon it has deepened itself into the passing years, and now the song itself bears them all. It is the only history they need.


End file.
